A new novel stars the greatest comic characters of 20th-century English literature: bumbling
Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet, Jeeves.

How can this be, one asks oneself, scratching the bean with Bertie-like perplexity. Didn’t P.G.
Wodehouse, who brought Jeeves and Bertie to life, hand in his lunch pail on Valentine’s Day in
1975?

Jeeves and the Wedding Bells is imitation Wodehouse.

And it is very good imitation Wodehouse, from British novelist Sebastian Faulks, who won praise
in 2008 for writing the James Bond novel
Devil May Care.

But winding up Jeeves and Wooster for new adventures after years on the library shelf is a far
more difficult mission than putting 007 through his paces.

Wodehouse was a comic genius, a master of farce, with a distinctive voice whose humor shines in
The Code of the Woosters (1938) and
Joy in the Morning (1946), along with the dozens of novels and story collections he
produced during his 93 years.

Faulks knows he isn’t Wodehouse and doesn’t try to be. The voice resembles that of Wodehouse,
but anyone who has read much Wodehouse will know that it isn’t the master. Which isn’t a knock on
Faulks: He’s a novelist, not a copyist. And he humbly labels his book “an homage” to Wodehouse.

Best of all, whether it’s Wodehouse or Faulks,
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells is a funny book that is worth reading.

As in all the Jeeves stories, the Jeeves-Bertie badinage is the best part of the package. That
is where Faulks’ voice becomes almost indistinguishable from Wodehouse’s.

Faulks throws in the usual Wodehousian silly plot, revolving around a weekend at a country house
where young hearts are trying to come together and something has to be purloined to make that
happen.

The biggest problem for a Wodehouse fan is that the new author has charge of the storyline and
can take it in directions that the characters’ creator probably never envisaged.